if I could gather all 9 muses

IRON HORSESHOE

If I could gather all 9 muses

around the iron horseshoe

Hobo found along the shore…

a middle C stranded by silted rivers.

If I could loop a thread-corral

around the bullish history

of bardic poetry…

Whitman & Olson, the whole passel

of a thousand Pounds – a ton

of raw American aggression

packed in Julian tin can

of salmon absolute (O prodigal son).

You must bind up the strong man

if you would rob his house,

strums Shep Jesus –

the Son of Man opposes Czar Ivan

K. Trump (& all his lawless minions).

For Moses was an anti-

Pharaoh, & his text a fey

neutrino-trace – reversing their dominions

(anti-matter realms of fearful absence).

Their malice plays for keeps –

the quasi-Reagan creeps

who stigmatize Abe Lincoln’s conscience

of profound Union.  A government

of people, by & for people

whose penny is a steep

L-rectitude – the normative ligament

                   *

of every child of God (my soul to keep);

the stony fundament

that grounds each document

hedging the tyrant (as ye sow, shall reap). 

For this Hobo bent toward St. Louis,

where clays rotate

around an elder potentate;

the foolish king, whose power was on lease

to that familial mutuality

(the kinfolk circle

& the starry wheel)

Jesus displayed in his nativity.

Star of David, hidden in the clouds

like 4-leaf clover

in a rainbow cover –

ark or Argo of celestial crowds.

So history plays out as Tauromachia.

Watch Minotaur succumb

to Ariadne’s plumb,

Man lifted up beyond Monarchia;

that restoration of all things

the servant-son proclaimed,

chanting beside the famed

Magdala Stone (rose of sharing) –

when Clover twirls in Hobo’s fingertips

& Isis-eye looks from his palm;

when JFK comes home

& Venus blooms… & Sophie Coulombe skips.

4.28.20

she is a mason too

FAMILIAR EYE

When the farmwoman goes out to sow

a scattering of cornseed

or fleurette africaine (dark weed

flung wide), she is a mason, too –

planting a cornerstone at dawn

to the northeast (between

the subtle nightshade of illusion

& nuanced elaborations of the sun).

Hope being the common denominator

of all our troubled labor

buried out there, somewhere.

Does language know?  Prickly pear,

prickly pear... where the shadow falls

across an exact location.

33 light-years... (someone

WW knew – at Kitty Hawk?).  Tiny candles

flicker in the hot wind from the crypt.

Presently details of the little

room emerge.  Her title

to the seasoned sailor, found amidships

after the ashes scattered like black raven-

doves into infinity –

where Mr. Sunborn’s akme

of knowledge curled its crown toward heaven.

This the mandala the builders left me.

Jenny with her Book of J – my

golden lamb of Ghent... familiar eye

peeled back, unvarnished (dyeing history).

1.30.20

a gargoyle versus Mars

ROSE EYE

Henry, Seeker, trails Hobo down.

Molting to Hobo in his sleep.

A baby spring flows deep...

soft ripple, brimming delicate renown

amidst angels, & water nymphs.

His almond lens mists over

out of focus (blurred,

all out of blue red).  His eye limps.

High in the dark sky chant the stars

above distraught Columbia.

Arcturus, Regulus, Spica –

framing a gargoyle versus Mars

(opposing men-o’-violence, that Man

of Lawlessness); a trio

in the Dragon’s Head (O

money jungle, African fleurette).  Tin pan

for Paris ghost-dance gold... your own

damn note, hunchback Igor

(boom boom Guillaume, poly-

poilu).  Viol sez, follow me down.

A purple prince from Minneapolis!

Adonis of grain elevators!

Lapped into clay (all yours,

A-frame).  A rose eye came – his sis,

Iris-Sophia.  Whorled full of vertigo,

gaunt San Francisco...

floored in the adamant, so

grand.  Your sky-blue motherland, Hobo.

1.27.20

an ocean swell

ACORN-RIM

This is that ancient harvest night.

Rhode Island harvesting

the sea.  A Newport wedding

(Jacqueline & Jack) at rocky height

(of Sachuest). & as the whale

harvesting the sea as well

is no less an ocean swell,

& Jonah is his pearl – still hale

& whole, alive from deeps of hell –

so Henry might rise again

from his own carapace of sin

(that shimmery-mirror Minotaur-spell).

Hobo-Falstaff lurks beneath a branch

of raven-wood (Cautantowwit,

Caws-too-much-wit).  Stone-set

into the Seeker’s providential avalanche –

one violet for the junk-jewelry state.

The salt air clears his head.

One Spirit wakens all the dead,

he chants – one Dream outshining potentate

& pyramid.  He nurses Henry back to health

like Whitman with his milky muse;

Abe & martyr Martin fuse

into the circle of their commonwealth –

a coracle or ark of Liberty

circumferencing azure shores,

whose acorn-rim Henry restores

to dappled shade (bright almond eye).

11.1.19

until this firefly leaps

BLACK SWALLOWTAIL

The flickering faintness of a hobo fire

grew steadier as Henry drew

near.  All for you,

muttered Hobo.  Your Falstaff, sire.

The heart’s a cracked & splintering

toy drum, he droned...

Henry just groaned.

He felt pangs of fibrillating

Providence – inviolate rose island

in the hearthland of the sea,

where what might have been might free

one Bonnard fête from tragedy (a sand

mandala, slipping under the wave

of pewter experience).

Imperfect sense is

normal, Hobo (hustling to the grave).

Look at that butterfly in Whitman’s weeds,

Henry!  Monarch, Hobo?

No – black swallowtail.  So

azure constellates, where black clay bleeds.

Ouroboros universalis – until

this firefly leaps... a spark

your gemstone soul to mark –

the pure gold’s melting to fulfill.

                   *

Like a gyroscope, the soul balances

on threads of conscience

& the normal universe

awaits your restoration, Hobo Eli sez.

7.23.19

a partial answer for Tom D'Evelyn

GREEN SAGE

We are born as the story goes, in

medias res – through the hands

of the midwife, to lands

of motherly milk & honey, the Pine

Island of family circles... onto

the clay wheel of slow

seasons – rusty merry-go-

round, with its quaint iron echo...

& you recall how the sun casts a shadow

while the river floats an image;

imagination’s green sage

is always personal, someone you know

& so the circle of epistemology

whorls back to its source.

Whitman shaken by the hearse

Dante dreaming Beatrice

body forth reality – adhesive,

compagnevole, suffused

with ineffable Providence –

thy feather-light & graceful Love

the origin & end of Universe

O playful Alpha-&-Omega.

All poetry is drama

& all storytelling is your father’s

microcosmos; all wisdom is Hagia Sophia

beneath their human dome of light,

& that Gateway Arch might

mark the navel of your motherland’s Cahokia.

6.26.19

chaired in the adamant of time

GOLDEN EYE

Everything known beforehand, O

my prophetic soul –

fate of gray pebble,

unknown soldier.  Black Sea, Argo...

those towering fig trees outside

the Sydney Observatory.

& inside, the orrery

projecting Southern Cross as diamond

(4-dimensional octahedron, or

great acorn of light).

A blue-green planet,

turquoise, emerald – your

dream-song door (hinge balanced

on a level’s golden eye).

Heirship of carpenter’s high-

beam ballet... tightrope (entranced).

A figurehead, chaired in the adamant

of Time.  Isis in Ohio,

Iowa... your Clover, so

low.  Lift her out of the slough, St.

Joan – lift her out of the grave.

A salience in St. Louis –

upturned canoe... Jessie

Ophelia, mickle gateway (moon-wave).

Behold, a child is born, Virgin

appears from heaven again;

my iron age turns golden

monarch, winged flower (human).

3.7.19

beamed into a barn corner

LEVEL PLAIN

When all the structures are dismantled,

the fabulous bright makings

woven by spider-kings

undone, what remains untold?

In Mendelssohn, I handed a dandelion

through the wooden fence

to golden Heidi, once –

old flame of infancy, first Valentine.

Her mop of hair colored like wheat

framing chaste happiness –

Gumilev’s compass,

calm charity for all (transparent,

sweet).  The shadow of the martyrs

like myrtle in the graveyard

darkens, green.  The bard

of America recalls through tears

the gentle captains taken from us

like matryoshka dolls –

god-like mortals

molting in dilapidated silos

like shimmering snowfields of wheat-

crystals.  So their presence

in aromatic silence

weights like ballast of a sea-casket

each holiday – all history

compacted in the oval

trace of one primeval

prophet’s kiss.  O mystery

                *

of your mandorla – crumbling wall!

Like Jonah from the sea

come whispering to me –

dark almond, ministering honey-gall!

Your tiny grain of wheat must die

in the heart of Everywoman,

Everyman... becoming stone;

stone reddened in Rhode Island eye

not purchased by price nor money

but only by love.

So that Liberty-dove

became Columbia, for buried Henry –

Astraea beamed into a barn corner

& Virgo spread her sheaf

of compassionate relief

in a sparkling surf of harvest air.

So your soaring icon in a mandala

hovers over Ravenna;

so Dante’s antenna

transmits in spectral panorama

the rainbow’s interlocking rings

framing that child-king

set upon humbling

all earthly dominion – til everything’s

remolded to a level plain

or playing-field; clay

children romp all day

within your carpentry’s domain.

2.14.19

conducting veinous electricity

MUD-ANGELS

These three mud-clay homunculi

hung from pink ribbons

in my tent – lumpy remains

from some Dance of Death?  My

mother must have brought them back

from Mexico (mud-angels

to guard her potter’s wheel).

Coatlicue of Quauhnahuac,

adamant Madre of encrusted Time!

Out of your bottomland

whirls eye-in-hand –

out of Monk’s Mound’s perennial slime...

Clay muscles rolling stone – conducting

veinous electricity –

out of nothing come to be

loaves loafing from the oven (rising,

singing).  A moss-green Isis by the Nile

(or in West Branch) you

rain your rivers blue,

compassionate Magdalen – your smile

lifts Jesús from the grave, raises

Enrique from the cemetery

too (some ordinary

day on Earth).  Hobo Jay cleanses

all hearts, rinses eyes with river-clay –

sighs, EPHPHATHA.  From boulders

God can lift up equal daughters,

equal sons... just look at buried Henry-manqué!

7.10.18

Whitsun yodeling

SHADY RIVER

Hobo goes with the flow of things,

he sinks into the green

entanglement of vine

& grape, the stream’s faint ripplings.

His logos is a Lincoln knot

scratched into driftwood

while Turtledove cooed

overhead (so reads Coyot’).

The knot binds everything, as with

her singing spine, the Argo

bound over il Mar Nero –

Noé’s noeud of adoration (myth

turned moth turned monarch seal).

Echoes from a cave

one vanished brave –

Love’s breadcrumb, who became a meal.

All come to bloom in memory...

as the canoe in the garage

scented with Micòl-image

breathes again inscript in Bassani.

A grail of dew sprinkles the summer grass

with Hobo’s oasis-gems;

yearning no one condemns

uplifted where it shall not pass –

into that monarch-realm of dark cedar

where a thrush warbles

& salt breeze marbles

lilac dusk (by Po-Boy River).

5.22.18

looking out a window

HER STATUE

I’m getting older, while the day’s

becoming lighter.  As

in Mary Gould’s last

watercolor (Bardsey Island, Wales) –

looking out a window from brown shade

of cave-like room, toward

April greensward.

Frail hand... pale grass, overlaid

with stone outcrop... old walls, old cross

(Romano-Celtic maze).

Delicate spring promise

from an ancient vault (Natasha’s

limping that way now, with me).

Her temple’s labyrinth –

sea-goddess, Amaranth –

only a sheep-door, west of Galilee;

only this frozen winterworld

all thatched with foot-

prints (near that ice-hut

where Henry’s burr-man hurled

like a cedar waxwing to mistaken ice).

Crabapple food for golden

beaks... spiritual gates, folding

for abject mortals (Minnesota nice)

into a paper bird from Paris, maybe –

Apollinaire’s turban

or Marianne’s tricorn

mayhap – dancing a crane-dance (starry

                    *

sacrifice) with shuttle-pagination.

Ariadne on the golden floor

rhyming with Morning Star

east of Cahokia – her crown of corn

lifting like Liberty (or Spirit

of St. Louis) for a

constellation (Columbia) –

gray-winged Jonah of an old planet

molting to Thunderbird out of the new.

Each Troy-town so will show

her Julia, Iulus, Juno –

or Sophie, prancing here and now

across the parapet of innocence

like dew upon the brow

of childhood’s rainbow –

O bright helm of human sentience!

Behold a Union, fused in fire & light

of soul-transfiguration –

future-human-nation

people, ever-living, stony-bright!

You see that Gate as through an old

& shady window, in a bed-

sit somewhere (in the Hebrides?).

Old stones, light green, grass-emerald...

sprung out of the eternal vault

like Livingstone out of jungle,

where fiery spirits mingle

in a playful dance... – her statue, Walt!

12.27.17

to the Open Road

PINE-SAP

Hobo took to the Open Road,

from Minneapolis

to ancient Providence.

Like Mark Baumer, or Johnny Appleseed

or Pippin, off the deck of Pequod

unto lustrous ebony

of kings (their feathery

full fathom five... old sacred wood).

Gray tintype of elder Whitman,

stiff lead butterfly perched

on his hand.  We searched

for you, O monarch soul – your Plan

a prairie zigzag into Mexico.

Across the Rio Grande

to feathered-serpent land

pacing a shadow like raven-arrow

(Narragansett shade).  Crumbs

for Elijah-bird, Joachim-

eagle (from the seraphim).

Who plummets (wings like snare drums

thundering).  A way of traveling back

into deep green earth,

Hobo – measure your worth

for cedar berth (from Hackensack

to heavenly Jerusalem).  Transfiguration

chicken shack – here Hen

gathers his brood again

into the spare refectory (Franciscan

                *

cornerstone) where Piero limned

an emerald almond branch

lit by a thread (match-

fuse flaring) like sun-skimmed

honey-milk.  So Hobo burbles home

downstream.  The Gulf beckons.

Blue radiance of suns

(YHWH, YInMn) out of Pacific foam...

& in RI, in San Francisco Bay

orange arcs of rainbow

(mulitocular O-show)

fan skyward Hagia Sophia spark-display.

A yellow-black viceroy wavers

from Petersburg, southwest.

Grave resurrection, chaste

Akme-vision... dark cherry life-savers

Persephone crane-dances

limping to the spring.

Natasha’s creaky swing

for Julietta 484   rusty romances

when we dead shall rise   ghost-dancing

circling into the cloud

of dust   meek now, not proud

Frank Muleteer   Jennifer Sing-Sing

abracadabra... Alcatraz

rock flung from sky

become canoe   your eye

be dew   pine-sap    river to Paradise

5.31.17

sunset orange

LAST STAND

The grey pebble, the unknown soldier

flung like a meteor

or Pippin to the ocean floor

blazes with spiritual authority (chaired

in the adamant of Time).  Quick

fiery arc of Jeanne,

dove-mild, Columbian –

from sweet Itascan spring to thick

Louisiana live-oak grove (along

a serpent’s labyrinthine

swerve).  Dream-scene.

Microcosm in a hobo’s glass, song-

songe awakened on Rose Island.

In your eye, Henry –

in our eye (INRI).

Crossroad of a king’s last stand.

Royal beyond kings, in their halls

of mirrors (drawing near

like Minotaur, a minor

character in Humpty-Dumpty Falls).

Lightning of intellectual fire

with rattling Thunderbird

enclosing Red Wing – Word

for equal brother, sister – Sire

& Siren in candescent colloquy.

Sheba & Solomon

enfolded in one zone

Galla (octagon vault-canopy)

                *

Placidia (ample, enduring crown)

might set like Orpheus

to shepherd sheepish US

to her clay plateau (emerald, ultramarine)

within Ravenna’s salty limestone

tombs (carted away

to Rimini, Ezra)

Franciscans monitor (Dante’s is one).

Henry-Hobo, ascending from the grave

of buried Berryman

under a Minnesota sun

shrives everything (old beggar-knave)

to thread the needle, so narrow

from Providence hillside

through Julian suicide

& Gateway Arch, to San Francisco

Porta Povertà – the Golden Gate

rimmed sunset orange

to rhyme with that strange

Libertà, shining in every heart...

the Jonah-Dove, or Jeanne d’Arc,

or Jenny Littletree

Corn Maiden, in D.C. –

my Pocahontas statue in the park

veiled by the evening radiance

of West Branch, Iowa.

I am the Mystery-Yahweh

of Life, she say – the dew’s sundance.

 5.30.17

night sea journey

SALT-SPARK

                          I mean the bedrock of our freedom – a bedrock of our

                          freedom is the right to worship freely. – G.W. Bush, 2.27.17

A light snow fell the first of March.

Ash Wednesday,

Will Blackstone would say.

Antithesis to Caesar’s march,

this errant solitaire into Rhode Island.

Where his friend Rog Williams

established bedrock freedoms,

planting Providence to stand

all time to come.  Like some great cedar

rooted in the granite eye

of personal soul liberty –

Milk River journey (if you dare).

Dark night of Jonah’s foundering.

Black scar of raven-

knife, Earth’s oven-

kiln.  Poe’s ghastly pondering...

Job’s pain.  Pound’s acid bath of hate.

So take this flake of ash.

Solder hexagonal gash

ice red across your brow, ingrate.

Within the creaking iron rose mandala

where Time slowly, slowly

runs to stillness.  Sea-

rose, sea-bell... whispers, ephphatha.

When the Eternal comes, emerging

from Leviathan

like an infant infantryman.

Unknown soldier, Everyhen, merging

                    *

with your sunken sun... a crown surging

from Lake Vermilion

– soul-memoire’s pain

et vin (violet lilac, ever-urging).

So the shy brown hermit lends his Lent

for ghost dance baptism

to Roger’s freedom-rhythm.

Chaste kamen of Magdalen, arc-bent

in parallax beneath the surface –

retinal curve of stone

lifted, of death undone

by innocence... & you will trace

the light thread-path, proportional –

like hazel-wand, or Blue

Morpho – wing true

monarch (black-yellow jag, regal)

from Providence to Mexico.

Across the night sea

gulf, Psyche, Persephone –

along an agate spiral go

into your copper spring turned green.

Slow wheel in clay...

a simple Lincoln penny,

twirling planet on a mast of pine –

the fiery root – Cautantowwit

& Manitou – the Spirit

blazing perfect light –

salt-spark of snow – sun-chariot.

3.1.17